Latest news with #TheWildBunch
Hypebeast
13 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Hypebeast
ERL Follows up 'The Wild Bunch' With New Pre-Fall 2025 Denim Drop
Summary Following the previous reveal ofERL'snew collection,'The Wild Bunch,' the brand follows up with the debut of a new denim line for Pre-Fall 2025. The range spotlights sun-faded, uniquely dyed jeans, where each pair is one of a kind — telling its own story through wear and texture. With relaxed silhouettes, the pieces deliver a streetwear edge while retaining a sense of timeless versatility. The collection is rounded out with hand-knit varsity cardigans crafted by local artisans and finished with hand-embroidered ERL logos in white, emphasizing the brand's commitment to individuality and craftsmanship. This denim-focused sub-collection presents a more laid-back street look compared to the mainline's untamed, deconstructed edge. It features an array of casual staples, including jackets, hats and – most notably – denim jeans and shorts. Designed for everyday wear, these pieces are easy to style and pair seamlessly with beach-ready essentials like a gradient tie-dye blue tank top, complete with a bold 'California' patch across the chest. Altogether, 'The Wild Bunch' and its denim offshoot reflect ERL's evolving identity — balancing raw creativity with wearable design. Whether you lean into the chaos of the mainline or the ease of the denim capsule, the collection offers something for every kind.
Time Magazine
17-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Time Magazine
Is a Perfect Brad Pitt Vehicle
There's a sturdy formula at work in Joseph Kosinki's hugely entertaining F1 The Movie, and it has nothing to do with the intricate Formula One racing regulations. The idea of the aging athlete, thief, or cowboy who has one last fill-in-the-blank left in him is at least as old as Sam Peckinpah's magnificently bloody—and deeply moving—1969 western The Wild Bunch, and probably older. You can argue that there's a double standard at work here: aging actresses usually get the far less glamorous, and far less proactive, fading starlet roles. Even so, there's something touching about a storyline that involves an aging guy making one final, desperate grab for that big bank job, that high-stakes bounty, that shiny, emblematic trophy. Their egos are just as big as ever, but their bodies are failing them in ways they never could have imagined at age 20. These types of roles are great consolation prizes for male actors as they age out of straightforward leading-man roles; sometimes they represent an actor's best work. To paraphrase an old and outlandishly sexist women's hair-color advertising slogan, Brad Pitt isn't getting older; he's getting better. In F1, he plays a scruffy, aging driver who trundles from town to town in a van kitted out with life's essentials—a bunk, a small bookcase, a pull-up bar—answering the call whenever anyone needs some random Joe to man a fast car. This is no way to make a living. As we watch him prepare for the movie's first race, a small-town affair where his takeaway amounts to just $5,000, he's a crazy wildflower bouquet of jangled nerves: he does a few desperate last-minute pull-ups, dunks his face in a tiny basin of ice water, and superstitiously slips a playing card into the pocket of his jumpsuit. Then he jumps into a car's cockpit, and wins. Pitt's character is Sonny Hayes, a perfect movie name for an almost-has-been if ever there were one. He takes his tiny check and drives off into the sunset—or, rather, to the laundromat, where an old friend and colleague, Javier Bardem's Ruben Cervantes, locates him after having searched for him for ages. Ruben tries to tempt Sonny into one last…well, you know. It turns out that Sonny was a racing phenomenon of the '90s, a surefire champion, before flaming out in a crash that nearly killed him. In the years since, he's just been a cool—yet stressed-out—guy tootling around anonymously from race to race. Sonny's old racing teammate Ruben is now the owner of a failing F1 racing team, APXGP—Apex for short—and though Sonny at first resists his friend's entreaties, he eventually succumbs, showing up for training in London wearing a rumpled shirt, with uncombed hair and a bag slung over his shoulder. In other words, he's cooler than anyone—even if, under the surface, he's also intensely stressed out. His future teammate, the rarin'-to-go hotshot Joshua Pearce (Damson Idris), is unimpressed by gramps. He later tells his mother this new guy he's being forced to work with is 'really old, like 80.' These two are quite obviously going to clash, perhaps too many times. Kosinski recently directed another older-guy-gets-a-second-chance movie, 2022's Top Gun: Maverick, and the script he's working from here—which he cowrote with Ehren Kruger—keeps oldster Sonny and young punk Joshua sparring maybe a little too long. But all the intergenerational drama is really just an excuse for lots of fabulous driving. As an individual who has not been behind the wheel of a car since passing my driver's test in 1986, I somehow adore racing movies. At one point during F1, as I watched Sonny navigate the twists and turns of a track the way a violinist sails through a tricky movement, I scrawled in my notebook, 'It must feel like flying.' The metaphor is so stupidly obvious that it eventually becomes an F1 plot point, but no matter. The F1 Grands Prix races take place in glamorous locales around the world—Abu Dhabi, Monza, Las Vegas—and the organization allowed Kosinski and his cast and crew to film during the actual events, though only during downtime. That's part of what makes F1 feel so vital, and so fun. Idris and Pitt do their own driving as well, hitting speeds of up to 180 m.p.h. (Pro drivers can go as fast as 220 m.p.h.) If they make race-car driving look incredibly cool and awesome, they also capture how emotionally stressful it must be. The crashes depicted in the movie are unnervingly realistic, multisensory symphonies of screeching tires and seemingly unquenchable flames. No wonder Pitt's Sonny has so many superstitious rituals. F1 is a Jerry Bruckheimer production, with all the attendant glossy, noisy earmarks. (Though Bruckheimer is best known for producing action films like Con Air, Armageddon, and both Top Gun movies, it's worth noting that his oeuvre also includes pictures like Paul Schrader's Cat People, the political drama Veronica Guerin, and the soap-opera spoof Young Doctors in Love.) It also benefits from the involvement of people who know what they're doing: F1 racing champ Lewis Hamilton was an adviser and producer, and he also makes a cameo. There's also a fine array of actors here: Idris makes a fine cocky young upstart. As the first F1 woman tech director (sadly fictional), Kerry Condon is spikily charming. (She rides a bike to work—the team's training HQ is in the English countryside—explaining, 'My job is wind, so it helps to feel it.') But really, Pitt is the guy. His face has weatherbeaten savoir-faire; it's a map of mistakes and regrets. F1 also does not skimp on the mystique of racers' gear-and-stuff: the flameproof zip-up jumpsuits, the soft, flat-soled driving booties, the giant helmets that make their bodies look tiny, wiry, and sexy in comparison, Daft Punk-style. Racecar driving is alluring and glamorous, but Pitt's Sonny shows us another side, too: how a dream can come close to sapping the life out of you. You really need him to win that one last race. How many times have we seen this storytelling convention, and why don't we get sick of it? It all boils down to the actor, and how good he is at vibing with universal aging-guy feelings, including the realization that your grandest achievements may be behind you. Brad Pitt, at 61, has finally aged into roles like these. And sometimes, as F1 proves, they're the best thing that can happen to a guy.
Hypebeast
12-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Hypebeast
ERL's "Wild Bunch" Collection Thrives in Chaos
ERLhas unveiled 'The Wild Bunch,' its latest collection, crafted atEli Russell Linnetz's Venice Beach atelier. Deconstructed styling, tattered finishes, and leather-laden numbers illustrate the cinematic narrative of a rowdy gang in ERL's Hollywood-rooted style. The fictional 'Dudley Dozens' are a notorious Venice Beach gang of 'mercenary henchmen turned anarchists,' described by ERL as 'handsome, charismatic, and completely unhinged.' Artisanal leather jackets have been ripped apart and sewn back together, a baby blue polo is torn up and stained with dirt, motorcycle tees, undershirts, and mesh tops are cropped and distressed. There are distinct references to queer subculture, evocative of the Tom of Finland's erotic portraits of leather-adorned muscle men. Unveiling its first-ever artist collaboration, the collection also presents pieces inspired by the work of seminal queer erotic photographerPeter Berlin, who happens to be one of Tom of Finland's subjects. A charcoal muscle tank is collaged with vintage photography by the legendary image maker, centring on a large full-body shot of the artist posing in his underwear, like many of the models in the campaign. Behind the playful theatrics, ERL emphasizes its commitment to artisanal and local producers. The collection introduces ERL's locally-sourced California denim, dyed and sun-faded for a unique lived-in quality. Elsewhere, the hand-knit varsity cardigans have passed through the hands of local artisans, using wool spun in the US. See the full campaign in the gallery above and stay tuned to Hypebeast for the latest fashion news.
The Guardian
20-02-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Nihilistic, anarchic, repugnant: Sam Peckinpah's 10 best films – ranked!
After making his name as a director of westerns, Sam Peckinpah was given his first shot at making a major studio film – an epic about a tyrannical cavalry officer (Charlton Heston) leading an expedition into Mexico. The production set a template for later Peckinpah films – heavy drinking, personality clashes, battles with the suits, and a final cut not matching the director's vision. Major Dundee was a victim of its chaotic ambition and it's easy to see why it flopped on release: even in the 2005 restored version, it is hopelessly unfocused, taking in Dundee's Moby-Dick-like mission to track down an Apache chief, the dynamics of the US civil war, encounters with the French army and an unconvincing romantic interlude. But it's interestingly flawed, a sort of dry run for The Wild Bunch, and Richard Harris is entertaining as Benjamin Tyreen, the Irishman who leads the Confederate prisoners in Dundee's ragtag army. Peckinpah swapped the wild west for the West Country for this still potent experiment in nastiness, later banned from home release in the UK until 2002 because of its controversial rape scene. Dustin Hoffman and Susan George play the middle-class couple who move to her old village only to be tormented by the leering locals and provoked into an orgy of bloodletting. It's a product of a very specific time, when film-makers were newly free to explore the nature of violence and question the limits of liberalism – other examples being A Clockwork Orange and Dirty Harry. While influential on action cinema and prescient in its unpicking of bourgeois unease, it is ultimately gruelling and unenlightening – and a grim caricature of Cornwall. The second of two back-to-back films Peckinpah made with Steve McQueen, this riveting thriller is very much a vehicle for its star, who had approval over the final cut and recruited Quincy Jones to provide a jazzy score to replace the work of regular Peckinpah collaborator Jerry Fielding. McQueen and Ali MacGraw – who began an affair on set and later married – play Doc and Carol McCoy, a dour latter-day Bonnie and Clyde on the run in Texas after a heist unravels. Peckinpah handles the tense action sequences with consummate professionalism but of all the films in his 1969-74 golden stretch, it's the least personal or thought-provoking. Peckinpah's talent for shooting action scenes made him a natural fit for directing a war film; his only foray into the genre, told unusually from the German perspective, had the misfortune to be released at the same time as Star Wars and has been overlooked ever since. Amid the carnage of the eastern front in 1943, contemptuous platoon leader Steiner (James Coburn) clashes with his arrogant aristocratic superior Stransky (Maximilian Schell). Nazism is little discussed and arguably downplayed (the only enthusiastic party member suffers a hideous punishment); this is essentially a searing portrait of a band of Brüder operating under the extreme duress of brutal warfare, and as such, it's less orthodox than it first seems. It proved to be his last decent film, he made just two more – the banal trucker comedy Convoy (1978) and the turgid thriller The Osterman Weekend (1983) – and then, in a curious coda, directed two music videos for Julian Lennon before his death at the age of 59. Nihilistic, anarchic, repugnant: this is Peckinpah unbound, let loose without studio interference on a low budget in Mexico, and it's not pretty. And yet this agonising ordeal of self-destruction is utterly compelling and at times pitch-black funny. Warren Oates channels Peckinpah himself as Bennie, a washed-up, shades-wearing piano player turned bounty hunter searching for the grisly proof that a man who impregnated a crime lord's daughter is dead. Bennie won't give up on his macabre quest despite his life disintegrating around him; like many Peckinpah characters, he is going down in a blaze of something, but it's not going to be glory. There are enough brilliant moments in this bewitching but sometimes bewildering western to convince you there is a masterpiece struggling to emerge from the various edits that have surfaced since MGM took the film off Peckinpah's hands at the end of a deeply troubled production. Coburn gives a career-best performance as Pat Garrett, the sheriff hired by Big Cattle to bring down his old buddy, unrepentant outlaw Billy the Kid (Kris Kristofferson). Peckinpah assembled a fantastic ensemble cast of western legends but there are just too many characters, many of whom are gunned down quickly. Bob Dylan is distracting as Billy's sidekick Alias, but he also provides the spellbinding soundtrack (featuring Knockin' on Heaven's Door) that helps create the film's lyrical mood. This nuanced, understated family drama demonstrates how versatile 'Bloody Sam' could be: there's nothing more violent here than a comic bar-room brawl. A wistful Steve McQueen plays Junior 'JR' Bonner, an ageing rodeo rider unable or unwilling to move with the times – a classic western archetype in a contemporary setting – unlike his vulgar entrepreneur brother Curly (Joe Don Baker). Ida Lupino gives an outstandingly intelligent performance as Junior's mother, and the film provides a documentary-like snapshot of Prescott, Arizona, in the summer of 1971. It's a great shame it flopped, and that Peckinpah didn't make more films like it. As the director himself put it: 'I made a film where nobody got shot and nobody went to see it.' Jason Robards, so often a fine supporting actor, takes centre stage in an inventive, eccentric and unpredictable tale of a man left for dead in the Arizona desert, only to strike water and set up a successful way station. Robards makes magnificent sense of Cable Hogue's contradictions, there's touching support from Stella Stevens as the obligatory golden-hearted sex worker, and David Warner's randy preacher is funny, alarming and sometimes profound. Not everything works – the Benny Hill-style fast motion sequences haven't aged well – but at its best this is a wise and humane film that comes to a strange but quietly astonishing conclusion. After working in TV and making a solid debut with The Deadly Companions (1961), Peckinpah really hit his stride with his second film, a supremely assured western that tapped into the elegiac strain that became his hallmark in the genre. Veteran icons Joel McCrea and Randolph Scott are the uneasily paired old friends tasked with transporting gold down from a rough mining town, scene of a disturbingly riotous wedding. 'All I want is to enter my house justified,' intones McCrea's Steve Judd, laying down a marker for all those Peckinpah protagonists trying to make it through a broken world with a modicum of integrity. There is vivid cinematography by Lucien Ballard, in his first of five collaborations with Peckinpah. After failing with Major Dundee and then getting fired from The Cincinnati Kid, Peckinpah found himself in the wilderness, his reputation partly restored by the deeply moving TV drama Noon Wine. But the zeitgeist of the late 1960s – the war in Vietnam, political assassinations and the collapse of screen censorship – suited Peckinpah's temperament and appetite for pushing boundaries. When he got his chance to return to a big screen project, he produced his masterpiece, a western that called time on the genre while inaugurating a new era of cinema. The Wild Bunch became notorious for the unprecedentedly bloody gun battles that bookend the film; viewed today, the violence hardly seems excessive or gratuitous, more of a corrective to the hundreds of films that had airbrushed the harsh realities of the west. It is also superbly choreographed, thanks to Lou Lombardo's pioneering and hugely influential editing techniques: rapid cutting and varied frame rates, including those slow-motion death spasms that became a Peckinpah staple. What is just as striking is how unpleasant so many of the characters are: the eponymous bunch are reprehensible outlaws, indifferent to the collateral damage their exploits cause, trailed by a loutish posse and locked in a fatal embrace with a brutish Mexican general. Yet somehow we root for the ruthless, brooding Pike Bishop (a sensationally good William Holden) and his comrades as their options narrow and they search for some kind of morality and meaning in the dying days of the old west.
South China Morning Post
23-12-2024
- Science
- South China Morning Post
‘This was shocking': the secret, brutal world of carnivorous squirrels
The California ground squirrel seems innocent. A familiar sight to hikers, the plump rodent can often be seen contentedly chewing on grass, seeds and berries. But according to recently published research, wildlife biologists have documented a fierce feature of the creature: It is a committed carnivore, hunting and feasting on unlucky little voles. Like a rodent version of the notoriously violent 1969 film The Wild Bunch , extensive video footage recorded at the Briones Regional Park in the San Francisco Bay Area offers repeated evidence of the squirrels' savagery. Squirrels chase voles – small rodents that are relatives of lemmings and hamsters – then catch and pummel them until they're a bloody pulp. Like cats, the squirrels sometimes let the mortally wounded creature limp off. Then they pounce again. Even as the vole squirms, clinging to life, they take a bite. It's been known that California ground squirrels won't pass up an easy meal of meat. Prior research found clues of ingested voles, as well as quail eggs, insects and shellfish.
